This is the first thing that is going to pop into your mind the moment you land your eyes on her. Her demeanour and her aura is enough to justify this first observation of yours. You won’t ever be uninspired or bored with her. She’d be that fresh breath of unpredictable mischief. She won’t ever take your shit and you can bet on it that you’ll be a changed man because of her.

She comes across as a paradoxical mix of outgoing but introvert, very social but seldom out, classy with the right amount of sass. But then, when you’re so used to not needing anyone, pretence stays away from you. This makes relationships a constant struggle for her. She’ll connect with many making them feel comfortable with her, but it will take her a while to reach that comfort.

This might frustrate you. There will be so many layers to peel, so many walls to break and just when you’d think you’re getting somewhere, you will find yourself back to square one. These times, have patience. Something happened that made her independent. Someone she needed left before she was done needing them. But these won’t spill out easily. She is extremely careful and uncomfortable with her emotions on display. Her emotion and pain are hers to deal with and that is what she is used to.

She will try to convince herself that she doesn’t need you or worse, she will try to surpass her feelings and push you away. Her primal instincts will be to compose herself and be apathetic about the situation. She knows exactly who she is and what she wants and her independent spirit gives her the liberty to follow her heart and she loves this part of her identity. She may come across as strong, maybe too strong for you at the beginning. Don’t let this fool you. This is her armour, the walls she took years to build to protect herself.

Falling for the girl who is used to not needing anyone will be a challenge. She will be enigmatic, she will oppose your views at every step, she will fight you and she will always want things to go her way at her pace. She is strong, but she is also scared- scared to love, scared of depending on and needing someone and most of all, scared of what might happen if you leave.

Because at the core, she is just a girl who has more love and layers than she knows what to do with.

Remember this,
He might not come out as the most easiest person to interact with. He might seem shy, or worse, a snob. But have patience, and when you pass through those layers of outwardly appearances, you’d find a person to whom you’d want to hang on even in the darkest of times and in the wildest of storms.

He is very impatient and sometimes, his temper gets the best of him. Don’t back down and don’t be scared. He only lashes out on those whom he loves the most.

He is a pizza addict. He can survive on pizza for days at end. Fancy restaurants never fascinated him. He’d rather cuddle with you on his sofa watching reruns of his favourite show or worse, Disney movies. He is a sucker for those.

He finds his passion in football, so much so, that he might come late or even miss a date. Understand his passion and support it, by being his number 1 fan. He’d love that.

He is horrible in planning. Anything. So that will be your responsibility. He is also terrible with dates, so expect a lot of mixed up confusions. Don’t get angry if he forgets your birthday. He’d do anything to make it up to you.

He is an introvert. Surrendering his feelings to someone is an alien concept for him. So when he takes you to that dark part of his life, just be there for him and hold him tight.

He enjoys and appreciates simple things in life. You don’t have to overdo yourself to make him happy.

Our story never got a chance. Our story ended as you started writing yours. But, then, I guess that’s how it was supposed to be. Not everything is meant to be beautiful and long lasting. Not everything is meant to work out. The love I have for him will always be there in some corner of my heart. He was, after all, my first love, as I was his.

But, you, my dear, is going to be his last.

So don’t worry and don’t compare. Don’t get insecure and never, ever hold back. Give him the world because he only deserves the best and every ounce of your love. And so do you.

In the hours that you slept, I laid awake, my mind waging a war within itself. Whiskey in hand, the edges of reality get blurred. Your loss is wrapped around me like a vice, suffocating me, choking me. It’s not the goodbye that hurts, I guess. It’s the flashback that follows.

I dream of you. Us. The fevered and recycled demons that haunt me. I’m scattered, broken. Flicking through the channels, I seek my own fear in cinematic nightmares. I yell my innocence and silence echoes through these empty walls. Fear made me parade naked through the rush hour traffic, an amusing sight for those countless, unforgiving eyes.

I’ve looked at you in a million ways and I’ve loved you in all of them. When you kissed me, I felt forelsket. Maybe, I was that naive girl, wearing rose-coloured glasses and maybe your absence gave me a reality check. And even though I’m glad I walked away, a part of me will always be waiting for you.
S.

We have many desires in our lives. Desires are those things which would be “nice”.

Having a cafe overlooking the majestic Swiss Alps would be nice. Doing anthropological research on indigenous tribes around the world would be nice. Free access to unlimited Pizza and Belgium chocolates everyday would be nice. Having my pants fit after those chocolate sessions would be nicer.

Similarly, we also have many dreams in our lives. Dreams that are our cherished aspirations.

Dream of topping the university. Dream of bagging a seat in a top college. Dream of landing the post we’ve been working those late night shifts for. Dream of owning a house in a very posh society and so on.
So, does that make Dreams responsible and realistic and Desires, whimsical and cosmetic?

One of the greatest books ever written is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. In this novel, the storyline revolves around a young boy, who is led by a mysterious king, and whose “dream” is to travel. In order to chase his “desire” he becomes a Shepard, and even gets to meet the woman he eventually falls in love with. As the story progresses, we find the boy realising his dream was never to be a Shepard. As the story comes to its last pages, we see that both his dreams and desires changed, and yet his path remained the same, because his dreams correlated with his desires.

Desires are often used for selfish purposes, for things that we apparently “want”. But, that doesn’t make desires unreal. If you don’t desire something, how can you dream of having it and pave your path towards it?

In any case, the term “dream” is usually used for more lofty goals. Sure, “desire” can have the same effect but it isn’t as good a choice when striking a sense of radiance.

So what it all comes down to is our definition of these in our lives. Desire can have lust at its face value and dream can have ambition and vice versa. What’s more important is our commitment towards the. Which ultimately makes them positive and attainable.

One of the most profound emotions known to man. Love that heals us and tears us apart. Love that’s awkward, impossible and infuriating. Love that takes us to the peak or throws us down to rock bottom.

Our FIRST LOVE, is generally our high school romance.

Stolen glances during classes, secret meeting after tuitions, texting while hiding under the covers- it’s everything that we had read in the books. It is the love we believe will have a fairytale ending.

Fast forward life to a few years we meet our SECOND LOVE.

This is the love to which we give our everything in a hope it would be everything the first love didn’t turnout to be. Sometimes it’s unhealthy, unbalanced, narcissistic or even manipulative with a good dose of drama- and that keeps us addicted to this emotional rollercoaster of a storyline. It is the love we wished was right.

And then comes the THIRD LOVE which we don’t even see coming.

The love that comes at the most unexpected of times and seems all wrong destroying every lingering ideals that we clung to about our perception of love. But it isn’t how we envisioned love to be; it doesn’t abide by the rules and yet it shatters our preconceived notions and shows us that love doesn’t need to be how we thought it to be in order for it to be true.

There are those who find love once and find it passionately last till their last breath and then there are those with broken hearts wondering if there is something inherently wrong with how they love.

We all can choose to stay with our first love- that looks right and makes others happy; or with the second one- that engrave an idea that if we don’t fight for it, it’s not worth having; or the third love- that chooses us.

The love that feels right. The love that just clicks. The love that actually lasts and shows why it never worked out before.

Maybe there is something special about the first love, something heartbreaking unique about the second and something satisfactorily amazing about the third one. And those who get to experience the third one, are perhaps the luckiest.

What it really comes down to is if we can love without limits or expectations.Just because it didn’t work out before, doesn’t mean it won’t work out now. All we have to do is to wait for the third love.

How often in the social media sites, do we come across people sharing profound quotes on love, life and everything else tinged with sadness? Random pictures with captions about depression and self harm?

A lot, right?

Nowadays,it’s almost like a trend. It’s all about the aesthetics. A black and white photo of a person staring off into the distance puts a psychological torment and beauty on the same page. Add to that a very deep quote on mental issues. So much so, that we often fail to differentiate if it’s reel or real.

The internet needs to stop glorifying something that real people suffer from. Don’t listen to Effy from Skins when she says that she is waiting to die or Drake when he says ‘We desire to keep the pain close, close enough to destroy us’ or the high school student who smokes saying he smokes to die.

Uploading #PrettyWhenYouCry pictures do not make crying pretty. You might be an interesting human suffering from depression but that doesn’t make depression interesting.

To reduce a human to the sum of their emotional and mental state is NOT beautiful; and to aestheticise and glamorize feelings associated with real problems faced by real people, for the sake of ‘likeable’ social media persona is an even bigger crime.

Approaching mental illness and propagating a culture where the word ‘bipolar’ is thrown around as casual illusion to mood swings and depression is thought to be cute and trendy, is not beautiful. If anything, it doesn’t make your social media profile interesting.

If you cannot help people when they are at their lowest, do not participate in promoting a distorted vision of something as negative as these emotions and phases. Everyone have their own battles and we have no right to judge them.